Chapter 30
IRA
I woke up before the sun came up. The sky was still wrapped in velvety silence, and the soft amber light of the bedside lamp flickered softly across the room. I turned slowly, pulling the sheet higher up over my chest, and there he was. My husband.
Prashant Pandey.
He was lying next to me, breathing comfortably now. His face looked calm and carefree. He had no wrinkles between his brows, no sadness at the corners of his mouth, just peace. I stared at him like a fool in love.
In love? Seriously? No, I was not in love with him, but I thought I was starting to fall for him.
His lips were slightly parted, with a softness that only sleep could give him.
I traced the line of his jaw with my eyes, remembering how it felt under my palm last night, it was strong, familiar, and warm.
The shadows played across his cheeks, showing how beautiful he was from inside and out.
I had the most handsome man in the whole universe.
My heart sank. This was not the face of a monster. This was the same boy who would leave handwritten notes during our officers' training.
The same boy who would wait four hours outside a temple to catch a glimpse of me during Holi.
The same boy who told me one night under the stars that he believed the moon turns orange whenever I smiled.
I reached out and brushed a strand of hair away from his forehead. My fingers lingered, and for a moment, I felt as if time had turned back. As if we were still the same.
But then he turned.
At first, just a movement in his sleep. Then a grunt sounded like he was in so much pain.
He twisted his body, gripping the sheets like they were a lifeline.
His jaw clenched harder and deep creases settled between his brows.
Then suddenly he became impatient and desperate as his feet thumped against the mattress, arms thrashing, his breathing no longer calm but uncontrolled and panicked.
"No... no... don't you dare!" He clenched his teeth. I sat up, my heart pounding in my chest.
"Prashant?" I whispered, shaking his shoulder softly. "Prashant, wake up..."
He was struggling, beads of sweat breaking out on his temples.
"Don't... Don't touch me! I said... no!" he shouted.
God! I reached out to try to wake him, but his hand jerked up and grabbed my collarbone so hard that I whimpered.
When I tried to rip myself away from him, I slipped and bumped into the side table. My elbow hurt as it hit the edge, and the lamp fell to the floor with a thud. Only then did he open his eyes and sit upright against the bed. He was gasping, eyes bloodshot and sweat-smeared.
His chest heaved as if he had just escaped death.
He had, years ago, but it kept haunting him.
I heard how he brought dead bodies of soldiers who went with him on missions and how his eyes were lifeless for months.
I was a soldier, how could I miss his pain, but I never imagined what he had been through three months, tied in chains and breathing beneath stone.
"Ira..." Prashant whispered, making me look at him.
I was huddled in the corner of the room, rubbing my arm. He turned and looked at me. Terror slowly formed on his face, as if poison were spreading through his body.
"Oh, God..." he choked, heaving his legs off the edge of the bed, crawling toward me.
"I didn't... did I..." he held out a hand, hesitating. "Did I hurt you again?"
I didn't answer, swallowing hard. He didn't hurt me, he was just having a nightmare. It was just an accident. My lips opened, but no sound came out.
"Ira..." his voice cracked, he looked vulnerable and broken.
"I didn't mean to. I swear. I was there.
.. in that place... those three months, those.
.." he swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbed.
"They just broke me, and now I'm scared all the time.
Of what I'll become if I let go. If I sleep too much, If I drink too much, If I love too much. "
I stared at him. This man, my husband. He was a hero covered in scars no one could see.
"You shouldn't have married me," he whispered painfully. "Not to someone like me. You should not..."
He looked at the ground, fists clenched on his thighs, his muscles flexed with restrained emotions.
"I'm not the guy who rode 8 kilometers just bought you coffee, Ira. I'm the one who wakes up screaming, the one who inadvertently hurts the people he loves. I'm still fighting a battle in my mind, and I don't know when it'll end." His voice was shaking.
"You married a cemetery. And I don't know how to stop myself from burying myself."
I sat there, frozen, pain throbbing in my arm, but it was nothing compared to what I was feeling for that man. I wanted to reach out to him. I wanted to scream.
But most of all, I wanted to hold the broken pieces of this man and tell him that he wasn't in a cemetery. That he was still a light. That there was still hope. That he was still mine. But I didn't move.
And in that moment, I realized something. Some wars aren't fought with guns. Some are fought in the silence between heartbeats. And Prashant was still fighting his battle even though he fought war with guns.
I didn't remember moving, but suddenly I was kneeling in front of him. My nightgown was cold and wet with sweat, sticking to my skin, my elbow still aching from the fall. But it didn't matter.
He was there, broken and raw in front of me, and all I could think was that he had once picked me up out of a crowd when I twisted my ankle, and now he couldn't even allow himself to stand.
Prashant sank to his knees, face down, shoulders shaking slightly as if ashamed of his own breathing. The silence between us was like a string, taut and trembling.
I reached out, my fingers hovered near his face. I was scared of being rejected, of breaking him further. But I couldn't help but touch him, so I touched him gently.
His cheek burned beneath my palm. He flinched. A slight jolt, but it broke something inside me.
"You think I married a cemetery," I said softly, "but I'm looking at a man who's come back from hell and is trying to give me heaven."
He didn't look up, just whispered, "You don't know what I saw there."
"Then show me," I said. "Tell me everything. It might help you release your pain and lift off some weight from your chest."
"No." His head shook. "I don't want you to see that part of me. The part that screamed when they thrust a knife to my spine. The part that cried when they told me to listen to the screams of others. The part that wanted to die to stop it."
His voice cracked, filled with something deeper than pain, maybe shame.
"I can still hear them, Ira. I can still feel the cold metal chain against my skin. I can still smell the blood. And sometimes... when I touch you, I'm afraid I'll bring them inside you too."
A tear slid down my chin and fell to my knee.
"I'm afraid," he confessed, "that one day I'll stop distinguishing between that cell and this house."
I swallowed hard. He had never told me this before. No one had. Not the other soldiers. Not his sisters. Not the newspapers. Not the news anchors who called him a national hero.
But there it was. The bare truth in front of me.
This was the price of being alive after seeing comrades die in front of your naked eyes.
Now I held his face in both hands and pulled him up to meet my eyes.
"Do you remember the first time we kissed?" I asked in a whisper.
He blinked suddenly. His eyebrows furrowed. "Why would you..."
"Because that boy... that same boy... is still inside you. He still smiles when I smile. He still makes stupid jokes when I cry. And he still holds my hand when no one else knows I'm falling apart."
His lips parted, but no words came out.
"Let me join you in this fight," I said. "Not as your healer. Not as your protector. But as your wife."
He stared at me, and for a moment, I saw a ray of hope buried deep in the rubble of his gaze.
"I hurt you," he said in a heavy voice. "I pushed you yesterday, I pushed you today. I'm scared of what I am going to do with you when I lose my mind."
"I've been hurt before, Prashant," I said, giving him a kiss on the forehead. "But it's never been the case that someone accidentally hurt me and broke me like that."
He closed his eyes tightly.
"You think your demons make you unworthy of love?" I leaned closer, pressing my forehead against his. "Then let me have your demons, too."
Finally, his hands reached out for me slowly. They rested on my waist as if he was afraid he would lose me.
"We don't belong to each other, Warrior," he whispered.
"No," I said in a steady voice. "We already belong to each other, Dimples."
Then he collapsed on me. His arms were wrapped around my waist, his face sunken into my chest, his body shaking in the quietest, most violent way possible. Not like last night. It wasn't lust, anger, or shame. It was grief.
I held him.
I rocked him gently, humming a tune I didn't recognize, as if I could lull the ghosts inside his back to sleep.
"Warrior..." he whispered brokenly.
"Yes?"
"If I ever hurt you again..."
"You won't," I said before he could finish. "But if you do, I'll still be here. I'll scream, I'll cry, I'll throw things. But I won't leave again."
Silence.
Then, in the quietest voice I've ever heard from him:
"...promise?"
I smiled softly through the tears.
"Promise."
And in the silence of that wounded morning, when dawn was just breaking through the curtains, I realized something:
We don't fit.
We break.
Over and over again.
But no matter how far we fall, we keep reaching for each other through every fight, every scar, every memory that won't let go.
This isn't a love story.
It's a war.
And somehow, we're both losing.
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